Colorado mother considers plea in overheating deaths of toddler sons

By Nancy LofholmThe Denver Post

Thursday, May 2, 2013

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b89ad515-add9-4f29-b0c0GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Heather Jensen giggled, smiled and flipped her newly permed hair as she waited in court Wednesday to waive a preliminary hearing so she can consider a plea agreement in the heat-stroke deaths of her toddler sons.

Jensen, 25, is charged with child abuse resulting in death, criminally negligent homicide and false reporting to authorities for leaving her sons in a locked vehicle for more than an hour with the heat running while she allegedly had sex with a man in a nearby truck in late November.

Two-year-old William Jensen and 4-year-old Tyler Jensen suffered fatal hyperthermia. William died at the scene — a rural roadside on the Grand Mesa — and Tyler died a week later at Children's Hospital in Denver.

Under a possible plea agreement that was outlined to the victims' grandparents outside the hearing, Jensen's charges could be cut to the two counts of criminally negligent homicide. Conviction on the charges could carry a sentence of 12 to 24 years, they said.

"They (the prosecutor and an investigator) asked us what we would like to see done. Of course, we said, 'The electric chair,' " said the dead boys' stepgrandfather, Robert Mathena. "But we would like to see this come to an end."

Robert and Diane Mathena spent more than two months fighting Jensen in court after the deaths of the boys. The boys died less than two months after Diane's son — the boys' father and Heather Jensen's husband at the time — died in a car accident.

Heather Jensen planned to have the boys cremated, but the grandparents won the right to bury the boys alongside their father in Palisade.

The Mathenas said they visit the graves every day, and on Sunday they were shocked to find there a letter Jensen had written from jail.

The Methenas said Jensen, who has been in the Mesa County Jail on a $150,000 bond since she was extradited from Florida last winter, sent the letter to a friend who stuck it to the triple headstone.

Robert Mathena said Jensen's lengthy handwritten letter, which he turned over to detectives, was addressed to her sons and stated that she was sorry, that their deaths had been an accident and that she had been "a good mommy" and had "always tried to keep you from harm."

He said she also wrote that she had found God in jail. She included a birthday card for William, who would have turned 3 on Friday.

After the boys' deaths, Jensen's neighbors in Palisade said she was a neglectful mother. They said she would constantly leave the boys with whoever would watch them. If she failed to find sitters, they said, she would lock them alone in her apartment. Neighbors said they had to break in to rescue the boys when the toddlers would pound on the walls.

Jensen is scheduled for an arraignment May 30, when she could either accept a plea agreement that is still being worked out with her public defender, or she could opt to go to trial.